Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Tuesday, October 14, 2003 Don’t Make Me Come Up There Now that my health insurance coverage has kicked in, I no longer spend my days off balanced at the top of a sixteen-foot ladder. No, instead I rented a 24-footer. First of all, can I just say how awesome it is to work Saturdays and then get the following Monday off? It rocks. Everything is open, but nobody is there. This is what I used to love about working nights, but without the crippling effect on my social life. I can do things like drive up to the corner hardware store and rent their one extension ladder for the afternoon without calling ahead, because, like, who’s going to be needing an extension ladder on a Monday who doesn’t already have one besides me? So the 24-foot ladder was enough to let me reach high enough to paint the top four feet of the house with four feet to spare, which was a small enough area that I had the thing back at the store within five hours. If you ever rent a ladder from the Bayer’s DoItBest Hardware store at 43rd and Upton, look for the gray paint smudges I left on it. So I was glad to have that done. Which only left a six-foot unpainted stripe between there and the top of the first floor. That was my project yesterday. It was another Monday off, so I hauled out the 16-footer and the painting supplies and finished up the trim. It was going to be nice to have this done, but while I was up there, I was thinking that the timing might not be ideal. It was looking like it might rain soon, for one thing. The sky wasn’t a particularly brilliant blue the entire time. And also, Trash was in Detroit. So if I were to fall off the ladder—sorry, experience some kind of “catastrophic ladder failure”—nobody would be around to take me to the hospital. I’d just lie brokenly in the shared driveway until the neighbors came home and ran over me. I did have the cordless phone in my pants pocket in the event of Trash calling from the road, so theoretically I’d have been able to call for help. But only if I landed in such a way as to protect the phone by breaking its fall with my body, which might result in more serious injuries. I mean, which is worse? Lying on a broken phone for six hours with two sprained ankles, or being able to immediately summon EMTs to attend to my shattered pelvis? And this is a decision I would have had to make on the fly. Literally. Then, leaning far over to one side with all of my weight on the outer arch of my left foot, it suddenly cramped up and I theoretically could have fallen off the ladder. Just like you hear about people doing. I suddenly gained a new respect for those people. Between that, and the weather, and my wife’s glaring inability to deal with possible emergencies by virtue of being in another time zone, I decided to leave the rest of the painting for another day. I didn’t want to mess up another brush anyway. Some other Monday, maybe. Hopefully an imminent one, as we don’t have many left when I’ll be able to work on the outside of the house without getting frozen to it. * * * Of course, I don’t have next Monday off because I’m not working this Saturday. Which I’m a little bitter about. Al Franken’s going to be on the show and I won’t get to meet him. All I get to do is write dialogue for him. My life sucks so much! No, it really doesn’t. Even aside from that. I’ll be in Austin, at JournalCon, with people whose cumulative fame and talent easily exceeds that of Mr. Franken. The pre-FOX-lawsuit Franken, at least. Perhaps you will be too, in which case we’ll probably meet. Chances of that are increased if you come to the discussions where I’m a panelist and watch me pretend that what I have to say, if anything, is relevant to the topic at hand. If you really see me struggling, feel free to raise your hand and say “Gosh, M. Giant, that is so relevant. Thanks for being so relevant!” Today’s best search phrase: “Nightmarish ass fish revenge.” And people say fraternity members don’t concentrate on their educations. posted by M. Giant 6:12 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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